Anna
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(56 comments, 413 posts)
Posts by Anna
Will It Be Possible to Travel to Distant Stars One Day?
Is it possible to get to extrasolar planetary systems faster than the speed of light? Harold White claims that it is. With his team at NASA, he manufactures a superluminal engine for interstellar travel. For example, such a vessel would arrive in just 2 weeks to the system of Alpha Centauri, which is 4 light years from the Sun.
White’s research is an effort to continue and expand the idea of the Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre, which had caused heated debates in the scientific world in 1994. The scientist suggested that the space should “shrink” in front of the spacecraft and expand behind it. The spaceship should behave as if placed inside a “bubble” of the deformed space and (more…)
Do Near-Death Experiences Prove That Consciousness Exists Outside the Brain?
Resuscitation specialist Sam Parnia continues to darken already murky waters of thanatology, by offering his colleagues to carefully examine stories of people returned from the dead. In his view, which will be fully supported by any competent philosopher, these stories shed light on the nature of human consciousness.
“Consciousness does not disappear at death. There is no such discrete point in time. Death is a process,” he claims.
In the middle of the XX century, with the discovery of methods of cardiopulmonary resuscitation, the study of death has entered a new phase. Initially capable of resuscitating a person within few minutes after clinical death, now people who “died” more than half an hour ago (more…)
How High-Tech Revolution Can Be Detrimental to Humankind
According to a team of philosophers, mathematicians and scientists from Oxford University, who are exploring the future of humanity, there is growing evidence that our reliance on technology can cause elimination of human race.
The media is actively discussing a range of possible disasters that can destroy humanity, but the most “obvious” threats, which include asteroids, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are unlikely to ruin the world’s population in the near future.
This is the opinion of Nick Bostrom, a philosopher and director of the University of the future of humanity, who, together with his colleagues, is trying to determine the actual causes of destruction for mankind.
In their last publication, the experts are pointing out that people are capable of destroying themselves through their technology. (more…)
Can the Human Soul Be Weighed?
The book “The Lost Symbol” by Dan Brown contains a chapter on some amazing experiments. According to the author, our soul is a material substance which can exist outside the body and can have weight. Therefore, it can be weighed. One of the characters in the book, Katherine Solomon, was able to weigh human soul. She placed a dying man (he had donated his body for scientific purposes) in an air-tight capsule, fitted with very sensitive micro weight detectors. While the man was alive, the scales showed a figure of 51, 4,534,644 kilograms. And after the old man’s death, the micro scales showed a decrease in the body weight. Brown does not specify this difference as a number, but makes a general comment: “This difference, though microscopic, is quite measurable.” This experiment allowed Brown to stipulate that the human soul does exist.
Dr. Duncan MacDougall from Haverhill (Massachusetts, USA), was the first scientist to conduct this kind of experiment in 1906, as reported by the New York Times on March 7, 1907. McDougall “detected” the change in the body weight when the person had died. The measurements were performed on a special bed, which was also a gigantic scale with high precision, and have shown that the “soul” (more…)
What Would Your Life Be Like with No Internet?
American scientists led by Richard Novatson conducted quite an interesting, but also relevant study which involved 4,000 people (50%-50% of men and women) who were directly connected with the Internet activity, and also spent a lot of time on social networks and other online services.
So, the question was: what would you do if Internet access was forbidden in your country?
The results surprised the scientists. About 67% of people would (more…)
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